Tag Archives: Borderline Personality Disorder

My kids listen to different music than I do. Big surprise there. I have teens and they dont want to hear the “Oldies” station all the time… (which plays music from the 90’s mind you. Oldies is the stuff from the 60’s in MY book) I do pride myself on being more tolerant than my hubby however. He takes control of the radio the minute the engine turns over. I hand over the stereo dial the minute kids climb into the van with me. It’s easier. Plus, if I’m honest, I want to know what they like on the radio so I can run a mom’s ear over it. We have forbidden stations mind you, but the pop stations, yeah, they get to listen to them. One sure way to make them crave what I DONT want them to listen to is to forbid it flat out. I DO remember being a kid, even if they think it is impossible.

I heard a song on their station that I’ve probably heard a hundred times in the last few months, but for some reason, today, it just hit me. I haven’t a clue if my daughter has ever really listened to the words and thought of our hard weeks, but I hope she really hears the words. It’s not a song I would have thought about if it hadn’t been for this week. It’s been a hell of a week… UGH. But I want her to “hear” she isn’t alone… someone else out there gets her pain, her thoughts, and they’ve found a way through them. They’ve taken them and become stronger if by only sheer will.

Life has been throwing me curve balls lately. My health has been having a blast creating havoc and keeping me bound to the things I really don’t want to be. I’ve had to cancel plans this week and rework things with frustrating regularity. I’ve been miserable and I’ve been mad. I hate being undependable. I’ve been forced back into taking meds I loathe and dealing with side effects i hate worse yet. I’ve broken promises to my kids and seen the disappointment in their eyes. There is NOTHING I hate worse than a broken promise made to my family. It slays me.

Beyond that, Lindsey has had a tough month, and the last couple weeks have been particularly hard for not just her, but for us all. It’s like I’m just trying to survive this month. Is it June yet?? It is? Whew. Thanks, June, for running in to the rescue! I looked up at the night sky over the previous weekend and said to myself that that full faced Cheese-man looking down at me HAD to be the reason squirrels had taken up roost where somewhat sane and semi-normal people used to abide. Our cute little ranch is a NutHOUSE!

Without getting into details, Lindsey and I have really had a tough time personally, and we’ve been hitting a wall that, as a mom, I just feel like at times I am just slowly loosing it. I want to understand and care, but at the same time, I am just a person. One who is trying her best to do all the things right as they come along, but no matter how hard I try, I always seem to get it wrong when it comes to her. She is a teenage daughter, with a crazy mother. That alone is enough to make most nod their heads in understanding.

With us however, there is a lot more to the layers that we dig through on a daily basis. There is the good, the hard, the bad, and the ugly. We’ve been living in the ugly zone a lot. Too much. I’m tempted to say, “careful, your face will freeze like that” on more than one occasion… though it really doesn’t have anything to do with facial expressions. More like a place we will be frozen IN if we dont just decide to move forward ANYWAY.

Because of the nature of Lindsey’s illness, her mind over reacts to normal frustrating situations. We only recently have made her doctor understand that when the doctor asks, “Do you feel like you want to hurt yourself, or have any thoughts of wanting to die,” that for Lindsey, that is a IN THE MOMENT question and answer. She answers based on what she feels when she is sitting in the office. She cant really remember or want to remember back in the last week or last month. The reality is that she at least once a week goes to this hard place, and on a bad week, she will visit these thoughts daily. A good week for us is when she is neither happy or sad, but walking a line where she is thoughtful and calm and content. Highs are hard because being really really happy means she will plummet that far back down below the base line as well. I’ve unconsciously begun to notice how long her highs are… because they directly have a tendency to predict how long she will stay in that pit of hopelessness when she falls from it.

That said, it is my greatest desire to see this girl smile, laugh, skip, run, dance, and jump freely. I love nothing more than hearing her laughter when she laughs with abandon. I love to see her face lit up and to hear her nonstop chatter when she is so full of life she truly just seems to forget her prison and blows right through the bars and escapes it for just an hour or two. For whatever reason, her mind punishes her for these bursts of joy. They are called manic phases. She can move from one phase to the other within a few hours or less. Adults will spend days in their manic phases and somehow i think that must be nice (when it’s a high) but the lows would absolutely suck then too…

All in all – regardless – we are still plugging away. We are still facing this. We are still battling it. It is still not WINNING over us. She is not captive to it – because we all choose to be sure she is not alone in her fight, and she knows, like it or not, we will never go away, give up on her, nor allow her to stay in a place of hopelessness. The battle is wearisome. It’s often overwhelming, and honestly, there are days I wonder how I can possibly be of any help to this girl so imprisoned… but I will never stop trying. Never.

Do you hear me, baby girl? You are not alone, and I refuse to let go of you, no matter how deep down into your pit of pain you recede and no matter how hard you push me away. You are stuck with this mom (who’s all thumbs at this) who just follows her heart and listens to the voice whispered from above on how best to love you in the moments that come to us.

She looked into the mirror on the wall of her bedroom and groaned. It didn’t matter what anyone said, all she could hear was the hissing of her own internal dialog like an old scratched up 45 record. It skipped and jumped and came back to the same snarled and garbled up lines over and over again. “UgLy, FAT, pAtheTic, UseLeSs.”

A tear trickled down her freckled cheek and followed the trail of mascara that had left tire tracks down each side of her face. The perfect complexion that everyone saw was in her eyes fiercely marred. With red blotches spotting up her creamy skin, she looked like a freak. No one understood what it was like. All it took was one second of her heart racing fast and the blotches would appear. She wouldn’t even know it was there if it weren’t for the heat of her skin against her frozen like fingers.

With the palm of her hand she began to rub at the black marks on her face and she slowly increased the pressure. The friction of the rubbing became hot against her face first, then her hand. She rubbed harder and harder till her face was burning. With both her hands she tore into both sides of her face and she rubbed at her skin till it began to roll like crumbs under her fingers. The pain was like a welcome visitor and she embraced it completely.

She wanted to just scream, or rage at her own reflection, but that wouldn’t fix anything. The girl in the mirror was not some impostor. It was really her. She hated the face before her. She began to cry and the tears came faster and faster.

She pulled back the curtains that hung around the bottom of her loft bed and climbed into her chair. She closed them back tightly and they held the world at bay. She sunk into her chair further and let the tears take over. Sobs silently wracked her tiny body.

A wave of despair washed over her. Nothing would ever change and she felt so hopeless she felt as if she were sinking into a big dark hole. She was overwhelmed and all her senses began to buzz. Tears, from a never ending supply, continued down her face. Her whole body shook and a loud moan escaped her lips. It surprised her, yet made her cry harder.

She no longer even truly remembered how she got to where she was now, all she knew was she was drowning and gasping for air. It was as if she were dying. She could hardly take a breath in and couldn’t push any air out. The darkness that she had sought out now seemed to be pushing on her, weighing her down.

Now, at this point, every time, the trigger that brought her to this place no longer mattered. All that mattered was that she had arrived. She was now here, and she feared there was no leaving. All she could think of was escape, and for her mind, there was only one way out of this cycle of hell… death. She craved it and that scared her beyond words.

She began sobbing with a low moan and increasing wails. She watched herself from a place outside her own body. She knew what came next, and she was powerless to stop it. The coming panic attack would consume her and leave her exhausted. She began to cry harder, angry that she couldn’t stop what she knew was coming, livid that she didn’t even remember why she was upset to begin with, and even more incensed that she didn’t even want to stop, to be honest.

She was crazy. She hated herself and she hated every inch of of that which made her up. And yes, she was even mad at the one who made her. Because if God makes all of us, why wasn’t SHE “fearfully and wonderfully made,” like everyone else? Why did he make her like THIS? She could see no good point, and if there was one, to her being like this, and she wanted no part of it. All she wanted was to slowly evaporate, disappear, or to fade into nothing.

But here she sat, still, and she was not evaporating. A low and painful wail escaped her lips and she let her emotions fully take over her mind and body. Rocking back and forth, she stopped fighting it and gave into it and let it take her. What was the point in fighting it? She let it full consume her.

Afterall…

Nothing would ever change.

Ever.

(This is a narrative written by Christi, Lindsey’s mom. It is all real, as things here always will be, of a regularly occurring situation for Linds. She worked together with me to get the feelings and the emotions of the moment down so that hopefully readers can step, for a moment, inside her mind for a moment and see life from her perspective.)